The present invention relates to a chip type solid electrolytic capacitor and, more particularly to the structure of a terminal.
As conventional chip type solid electrolytic capacitors, for example, there are a resin-molded capacitor and a simple resin-sheathed capacitor. In the resin-molded capacitor, external anode and cathode leads 12 and 13 are connected to both the terminals of a capacitor element 11 manufactured by the well-known technique as shown in FIG. 5, and an insulating sheathing resin layer 14 is formed by externally coating these leads 12 and 13 with a molding resin. In the simple resin-sheathed capacitor (FIG. 6), a capacitor element 11 is simply coated with an electrostatic powder resin 24 or the like to form an insulating sheathing resin layer 24, and external terminals 22 and 23 are directly connected to both the terminals of the capacitor electrode 11 without using anode and cathode leads.
In each of the conventional chip type solid electrolytic capacitors, the capacitor element 11 has rectifying characteristics. For this reason, when a chip is mounted on a printed wire board with its terminals being connected to erroneous polarities, a backward voltage is applied to the chip, and the following programs are posed. That is, breakdown occurs in the capacitor element 11, a large short-circuit current flows, and the temperature of the capacitor element 11 is increased to cause burnout of the capacitor element 11.